The usefulness of computerized business information systems to management depends in large part upon the accurate and timely input of data. Field sales and service personnel for large companies often conduct their selling or service activities at diverse locations from the central office. Present practices for reporting and inputing remote sales or service data to a central data processing center involve collecting and recording the data manually and then forwarding it to the central office by mail, hand delivery, or by telephone. Upon receipt of the field data, it may be reviewed for errors, prepared and formatted for entry into the computer, and finally data is input to the computer by any one of several means, such as optical character recognition or direct entry by a keyboard operator. Such data collection systems have proven to be unsatisfactory in respect to the timely entry of accurate data to a central data processing system in a cost effective manner.
More recently, many companies have utilized portable hand held computerized data entry terminals for the entry and transmission of the data over ordinary telephone lines. Such a portable data entry terminal for a telecommunication system is disclosed in Applicant's copending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 202,020, filed Oct. 28, 1980. Such computerized data entry terminals communicate with a data receiver interfacing between the data entry terminal and the host computer. The hand held computerized data entry terminal and data receiver form an improved telecommunications system for the recordal and entry of field data to a central data processing system. The format of the data entered into the data receiver may not be in the format desired for the record output from the data processing center. Any data receiver down time caused by scheduled or unscheduled service time disrupts the flow of business information to management and decreases the cost effectiveness of the system. A need has thus arisen for an improved data receiver with improved versatility for handling data, as well as improved reliability for testing, servicing, and reprogramming the data receiver.